


gentle goes the sun

by Ponderosa (ponderosa121)



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Bisexual Daryl Dixon, Blow Jobs, Bottom Jesus (Walking Dead), Emotionally Repressed, First Time, Hook-Up, M/M, Oral Sex, Season/Series 07
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:35:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22219399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ponderosa121/pseuds/Ponderosa
Summary: Most days Daryl likes silence, the new quiet stillness of this world—not because it makes it easier to know when something bad’s coming around the bend, but it makes everything seem bigger. Bigger than him, bigger than any of them. Makes him think there might even be such a thing as God. Tonight though, the silence reaches for him relentless and pressing, makes it impossible to not feel the space Jesus takes up in the air beside him.(aka shameless mid-season 7 hookup smut)
Relationships: Daryl Dixon/Jesus
Comments: 8
Kudos: 111





	gentle goes the sun

**Author's Note:**

> A million thank yous to [batonblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/batonblue/) for the beta!! If I am missing any content notes or tags, please let me know. This starts with a mention of past dubcon sex work, but I'm guessing that may be fanon typical.

Daryl knows the look Jesus gives him even if it ain’t come his way much. He’d _used_ that look thirty some odd years past to pay for rent or drugs or gas and shit. Pocketed fistfuls of sweaty cash from those lardass truckers who’d called him pretty. Spit into the asphalt between eighteen wheelers afterwards and washed the taste of jizz out of his mouth with warm Coke stolen from the mini mart. It’s the kind of look that begs for a trade when you don’t got nothing else to offer.

He ignores it. He’s never been one to run his mouth, and being here near Maggie he’s so knotted up inside that even the idea of words is hard. What’s he gonna say besides? That it ain’t right? He’s left that shit behind too.

Later, when all that regret—the only real regret he’s carried in a long while—comes spilling out of him on a river of snot and stinging tears, and waking up starts to feel a little less heavy, well he still goddamn ignores it. He’s got bigger shit to worry about than whatever the fuck it is the kid thinks he’s got to give. Hilltop folks are learning to toughen up, but this fight is gonna make for a lot of bodies.

Tonight it’s dark but not quiet, warm but not hot. The windows of Barrington House are glowing and there’s storytime and a bit of piano going on inside. Daryl sits on the step of the medical trailer, close enough to listen to the murmur of sound, far enough he can’t make out any words.

“Not a fan of ragtime classics?” Jesus asks on approach. 

The kid’s always so fucking quiet, creeping through the weeds like a cat. He doesn’t try and take a seat beside Daryl, but he does drop into a low crouch. His coat puddles around his heels.

“Nah.” Daryl doesn’t throw a glance his way. If he does, he’ll see that look, the one that seems to think he’s a whole different kind of man than he is.

“Me either,” Jesus says. He pivots at the ankle, left knee pressing to the earth as his arm drapes over his right. He’s always ready for trouble. At least he’s got that going for him. He might be soft but he ain’t helpless.

Most days Daryl likes silence, the new quiet stillness of this world—not because it makes it easier to know when something bad’s coming around the bend, but it makes everything seem bigger. Bigger than him, bigger than any of them. Makes him think there might even be such a thing as God. Tonight though, the silence reaches for him relentless and pressing, makes it impossible to not feel the space Jesus takes up in the air beside him. 

“What d’you want?” he asks finally. From the corner of his eye he catches the shadow of a smile curving the corner of the kid’s mouth.

“Nothing. Bit of company maybe.”

“Company,” Daryl repeats it like it’s a tired joke. 

What the fuck does the kid think he’s doing out here; Jesus should be inside suffering through that awful Mardis Gras sounding shit like the rest of them. These people are as close as he’s got to family. Why waste time with someone you don’t hardly know angling to suck dick? People ain’t so picky anymore; any number of guys in there would probably be happy to put Jesus on his knees, turn down the lights, and let him smoke some pole.

“You know, people tell me I’m a good listener.” Jesus pulls up a bit of grass out of the ground and rolls it between his fingers. When he doesn’t get a response, he tips his head and looks straight at Daryl. “Probably helps that I was the quiet one in the group home.”

A snarl crawls its way up Daryl’s throat. So that’s some of it. Maybe this is Maggie’s doing, thinking he oughta have someone to talk to—one fuck up to another. Screw that. He’s said his piece, there’s nothing else needs saying. 

“Save your sob story for someone who gives a shit.”

Jesus breathes a laugh. He flicks the grass back into the dirt and dusts his fingers off on his pants. 

“Worth a try,” Jesus says, rising back up to his feet. “I guess it’s no surprise to find out Maggie’s worried about you.”

Finally Daryl turns to peer up at the kid and skewer him with a look. “Yeah, well, she can mind her own damn business.”

Jesus holds his gaze, eventually giving him a small nod of acknowledgement. His tongue sneaks out to wet his lip and then he’s got that hungry look again. He nods at the door and puts a hand on the latch. 

“Well if you’re not interested in talking, you could join me inside instead,” he says, and goes in.

Daryl stays on the stoop for a minute, then mutters a curse and follows, figuring that maybe this ain’t gonna stop if he don’t make it stop. He doesn't need this kind of shit, and there’s a smackdown waiting on his tongue to be spit into the air, not cruel, just necessary. But the minute the door’s clicking shut and Jesus is putting hands on him, a weariness comes over him.

The kid pushes him towards a chair and he just lets it happen, inevitable like a herd moving through. Jesus climbs on top of him and he’s hardly a handful when Daryl takes him by the waist. The kid grinds on him, putting hands on Daryl’s face and smiling as he brings their mouths together, lips open on his and breathing his breath but not quite trying to kiss him. It doesn’t take long for Daryl to get hard, friction doing its thing, and soon as he does Jesus’s breath starts to carry a bit of sound. It’s not bad but Jesus is getting a helluva lot more out of it than he is.

Maybe he can just put a hand between them, jerk them both off and let Jesus nut at the feel of having another dick hot up against his own. Or maybe he can just take his out and push Jesus down and let him suck it dry. What’d be the harm. But as he’s thinking it, the roll of the kid’s hips stutters and stalls, dying out like there’s no more gas in the tank.

“What’s wrong?” Jesus pulls back to ask, and even in the shadows his pale eyes stand out. 

Soft not helpless, Daryl reminds himself, and how is it that Jesus is clearly horny as all get out but still considering what it is Daryl wants. Still willing to _give_ when everything’s in the world’s got strings attached. All this time in Rick’s crew and Daryl still don’t know if he’ll ever really understand what it means to trust and do things for the right reasons.

“Nothing.”

Jesus’s eyes slide shut and his palms slip from Daryl’s face. He sits back, parking his ass down on Daryl’s thighs. A bright flash of teeth scrapes over his lip, and when his lashes lift again there’s another look Daryl recognizes hiding there. Jesus had hung some hopes on this, on _him_ for some dumbass reason. 

“You don’t really want this, do you?” the kid asks.

Truth is, he can’t hardly tell what he wants anymore. If he ever knew beyond chasing a high or dodging a fist. But trying to get by ain’t the same as living or wanting, that’s the whole point of all this shit they’re building, right? Where the fuck does a skinny twink trying to get up on his dick factor into anything?

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—” Jesus says. He slides his foot to the floor and stands to leave. To leave and give something to Daryl even in that: space and a choice and kindness of the sort that digs into his guts like a rusty blade. 

And maybe it’s that twist in his innards he’s trying to avoid when he snaps an arm out and pull Jesus back. When he mutters, “Lemme just—” and hooks an arm around Jesus’s waist to draw him back onto the spread of his thighs, ass snug against his dick like he’s Santa Claus. When he tells the kid, “Lemme take care of that for you,” and rests his chin there at the slope of Jesus’s neck. All that fucking hair gets stuck to his lips, but he don’t mind the feel of it. Still, it’s how he knew the kid was a fucking pain in the ass from the get-go; all the trouble to keep that shit clean and washed.

“You don’t have to.”

“No shit. Shut the fuck up.”

He can feel a laugh shake through Jesus as he relaxes, lays back against Daryl’s chest like a stripper giving him a lap dance. The hitch in his breath when Daryl opens his pants and gets a hand in to stroke him ripples through the air like a gunshot, and he shudders when Daryl spits on his fingers to get back to it good and wet. He skids his hand up Jesus’s front and finds a tight little nipple through the fabric of his shirt. Jesus moans and the echo of it stays with Daryl, starts to resonate somewhere in him, a little spark sputtering at the edges of a fire pit gone to ash.

The flex of the kid’s body says this is nice and he’ll take what he can get, but it’s nothing he can’t do himself. He’s aching to get fucked, the curve of his ass working against the bulge of Daryl’s dick like with enough encouragement Daryl will just open his fly and slip it to him. It’s why he chose here and now, ain’t it, because you don’t need spit and determination when there’s a whole fucking cabinet full of medical grade lubricant within reach, but—

“Why me?” Daryl asks. 

Is it that he doesn’t look at women like they’re something he’s owed? Is it just proximity and slim pickings? He can feel Jesus’s heartbeat beneath the spread of his palm, and it’s nice to feel something so strong and alive under his hands.

“Why not?”

“Don’t fucking answer a question with a question, smart ass.”

“Because at times I’m lonely,” Jesus says, and the hesitation before his answer leaks into the air leads Daryl to think it might even be the truth. One he’s not all that comfortable with. 

He wriggles out of Daryl’s hold to stand up and study the look on Daryl’s face again, searching for something Daryl don’t know how to give. There’s no telling what Jesus sees there, but whatever it is makes him hitch his pants back up, his hair falling down over his face as he tucks his dick away. 

When he glances back up, it’s clear he thinks this is a pity fuck—which maybe it is—and the kindness lands like a fist when he smiles sadly to add: “And I think you are too.”

Daryl shakes off the dull angry hurt of it. “You don’t gotta go.”

“I know. And I don’t entirely want to,” Jesus says. He pauses in the doorway. The faint noise of Barrington House floats in. “But maybe when you’re sure you want this, if ever, you can come to me.”

*

“Couple dozen cans of fruit. That’s all?” Daryl drops one of them back on Maggie’s desk.

“The batteries and gasoline are welcome, but the food is getting dire,” Maggie says. She pores at the map while Jesus throws Daryl an apologetic look. It weren’t a dig at the kid’s skills—it’s just that at a quarter rations and only tinned fruit on the side, folks are gonna end up with the shits.

“I can try going further,” Jesus says.

“No,” Maggie replies quickly. “I don’t want you more than two days out in case of trouble.”

Daryl leaves them to strategize and puts the rest of his day towards little tasks: shoring up defenses, spending time with Judith, standing guard over the Saviors. Under it all, he wrestles with the way Jesus seemed to think he’d been judging him for what he’d managed to scrounge up. Hell, finding anything these days is hard enough as it is.... The kid’s reaction sits under his skin all day like a sliver too small to pluck out, annoying until it begins to fester.

The sun is past the horizon when he can’t take it any more and knocks on the kid’s door. He hasn’t worked out what he’s going to say yet, and when the door swings inward it hits him that the churning in his stomach feels a lot like he’s heading towards trouble when there’s no going back.

“About back there, with Maggie,” Daryl says, pretending he don’t notice the flash on Jesus’s face that says of all visitors he expects to come knocking, Daryl ain’t even near the list.

“It’s alright.”

Daryl clenches his jaw, wishing the kid would just let him get this out. “It ain’t,” he says, and holds Jesus’s gaze like that’ll force his words and his meaning to sink in.

It doesn’t work. 

“It is,” Jesus says with quiet conviction. He props his shoulder against the doorframe and crosses his arms over his chest. He looks past Daryl and lifts a slim finger to point west towards where the last of the day is fading. “We need everything we can get to make it through this, and we don’t have the time or the resources to find it.” 

He smiles softly, and it’s not sad on the edges so much as it is resigned, which doesn’t exactly make it better. The word “ _lonely_ ” echoes in Daryl’s head.

“Ain’t for lack of trying,” Daryl tells him, and that’ll have to do for an apology because he isn’t gonna stand out here arguing about it no more. He shifts his weight and peers past the kid, into the shadows of his trailer. He points with his chin towards the couch. “So, you gonna let me in or what?” 

Jesus’s eyes widen and chews on his lip, and for a second it looks like he’s gonna decline, but then he rolls to the side to invite Daryl in. Once he’s inside, Jesus catches the door with his heel to kick it shut and asks: “Should I flip the lock?” 

Daryl doesn’t answer, just muscles up close to him until he’s got Jesus pinned to the door by those skinny hips. It flips a switch in the kid, and he loses that bit of calm that always seems layered over him. 

“Privacy it is,” Jesus says, his breath rushing out of him as he reaches beside him to twist the lock. 

His hips strain against the press of Daryl’s hands and when he gets hands on Daryl’s face again that little spark that’d almost caught the last time clicks into flame. It’s not a roaring heat, but a steady flicker that promises to grow and fill his belly.

“You like it up the ass or in the mouth?” Daryl asks him.

“Are those my only options?” Jesus tips his head up like he’s begging for a kiss. 

“Nah. I’ll take it in the mouth if all you wanna do is get your dick wet,“ Daryl says, sliding his hands back until he’s got handfuls of Jesus’s ass. He pulls him closer until he can feel Jesus’s hard-on and bumps the kid’s mouth with his own. “Last time though, seemed like you wanted it….”

“I, uh—” He blinks and whatever’s rattling around in his pretty head isn’t making it to words so Daryl nudges his mouth again and then kisses him.

He’s never full on kissed somebody with a beard before. It ain’t bad. Still soft, just a different sort. There’s something sweet lingering on Jesus’s tongue, hint of maple maybe, and the kid kisses back like there’s some sort of prize to be won for enthusiasm. Daryl sucks on Jesus’s tongue and nibbles at his lip, slowly rediscovering what it means to think of a mouth as something other than its component parts, more than a mechanism to bite and chew and rend.

He finds a whisper of a moan pulled out of him when Jesus grinds against him and gives as good as he gets. Their teeth click a couple times, but it ain’t hard or rough, it’s just haste—trying to feel everything good happen at once. 

Eventually he’s walking backwards towards the couch and pulling Jesus with him, still squeezing the kid’s butt, fingers digging in to where he can feel muscles working as Jesus stumbles along with him gasping and grinning. 

“I do want to get fucked,” Jesus says when they’re a couple steps away from the couch and Daryl’s rubbing at the seam down the back of his pants. The heat of his crack seeps through the fabric and he groans when Daryl takes whole handfuls of his asscheeks again. “But I’m going to need to go get something for that.”

“In a minute,” Daryl tells him. He drops down onto the couch and when he looks up, Jesus’s teeth catch on his lip. Daryl shrugs out of his vest and pulls his shirt up over his head as he says: “Go on. Take your clothes off. I ain’t gonna be the only one bare assed.”

He’s still working on shucking his pants by the time the kid is stripped naked and waiting with his dick bouncing in the air.

When he’s kicked the last of his clothes off into a pile with his boots, Daryl hawks a wet one onto his hand and pulls Jesus back to him, mouth catching the head of the kid’s dick as he slides spit-wet fingers up between his legs to search around for his hole. He’s always preferred the taste of pussy on his tongue, but maybe it’s ‘cause most guys he’s sucked off have smelled like piss and sweat and it was hardly ever really about a good time. Jesus has only got the sweat of the day on him, a salt taste that fades after a couple swipes of Daryl’s tongue. Course he’d be clean and tidy even in this heat what with the way he works so hard to keep his fucking hair washed and his beard trimmed. Daryl works him one hand in the front and one in the back, fingering him as he fists Jesus’s cock and jacks him in time with the bob of his head.

It’s like Jesus can’t figure out whether or not to thrust forward or push back so he ends up standing still and trembling between the sprawl of Daryl’s knees. He’s got his hands on Daryl’s head, but he doesn’t even watch—his eyes are shut tight though his mouth’s fallen open—and he’s quiet but his breath is ragged in the air. Shouldn’t be a surprise he’s quiet since most fucking these days happens that way, but it makes Daryl want to do him so good he’s howling for it.

When the push of his finger starts getting sticky, Daryl slips it out, focuses instead on what his mouth is doing. He’s good at this, he knows. You gotta be if you want it over with faster. That’s not what he’s aiming for now, but there’s a weird pride to sucking it hard and deep and making Jesus twitch in a way that says a bit more and he’s gonna nut.

He gives Jesus’s dick a few more strokes, fist bumping where his lips are wrapped tight before he pulls off, spits on the head and takes the kid once all the way in the throat. Like riding a goddamn bicycle, he thinks, when Jesus shudders and swears and pushes him off. 

“Didn’t expect that, did you,” Daryl says, and picks stray hairs off his tongue. “Go get whatever it is you wanna use, unless it’s better if you come first.” 

Lotta girls he’s been with liked that, making sure they got theirs and he had them nice and wet before he was pushing into them, but the only other guy he’s ever fucked up the ass—well, that had been quiet and secret, squeezed together by circumstance in a dark tent as it was pissing down rain, barely moving after the guy had taken him out of his pants and nudged his dick in place. They hadn’t said a word to each other in the morning and never saw one another again before or after the dead rose up.

Jesus pushes a hand through his hair and takes a half step back, saying, “I’d um, much rather have you in me.” 

He glances down at Daryl’s dick and flashes a smile—oddly shy, oddly sweet—before slipping off to dig around in his stuff. It doesn’t take him long to find what he’s looking for, and when he comes back he crawls right into Daryl’s lap, knees straddling wide on the couch cushions. Daryl runs his palms up the tops of Jesus’s thighs as the kid gets himself ready. Under the skin, Jesus’s muscles are tense and quivering until suddenly they aren’t, and he’s leaning down to kiss Daryl again lazy and slack-mouthed as he fucks himself open.

“Almost,” Jesus says, whispering the word onto Daryl’s tongue.

Daryl kisses him harder. He’s hungry for it now; ready to sink into Jesus’s sweet boypussy and feel it squeezing tight around him. He reaches a hand around, fingertips slipping in the slick mess where Jesus’s knuckles stretch his rim tight. Daryl’s dick throbs, and he shoves aside the fall of Jesus’s hair with his free hand to grip the side of the kid’s neck. He nudges Jesus’s chin up with his thumb to mouth a kiss under the curve of his jaw.

“Don’t expect a marathon fuck,” Daryl tells him. Hell, he’ll be lucky if he lasts five minutes.

A lick scraping across the stubble at Jesus’s pulse makes his hole clench up and Daryl feels it force the kid’s fingers out. He gasps as Daryl tongues a sucking kiss in that same spot, and Daryl slides slick fingers over Jesus’s to press the kid’s slim fingers back inside. Pushes them deeper and thinks about how that’s gonna be his dick in a minute or two.

“Neither expecting one nor needing one,” Jesus murmurs, and whether he’s really ready or not, he slips his fingers out and finds Daryl’s cock. 

He sits himself right down on it, only telling Daryl to wait when instinct tries to pry Daryl’s ass off the couch to thrust up and bury himself balls deep that sweet, slick warmth. It takes a second, but then Jesus is sinking onto him entirely with a blissful smile widening his mouth. 

“There, okay. Now we’re good.”

Yeah they are. It’s just as tight and perfect as he’d anticipated, and he cups his hands under Jesus’s ass before giving him a little bounce. The couch puts up with it better than the tired old thing in the shithole he’d grown up in, and he’d been near skinny as Jesus back then. Skinnier maybe ‘cause for a long time chasing 8-balls was a whole lot more important than scrounging up a meal. A squeeze and his mouth grazing the hollow of the kid’s throat starts them towards finding a rhythm and soon enough it’s Jesus doing most of the work and setting a pace he can rock up into.

It must be good because Jesus keeps trying to kiss him and failing, each time tipping into a moan or a breathy laugh as his hands grip the back of the couch and he works himself on Daryl’s dick. The sounds, quiet as they are, sink into Daryl’s skin and it’s almost better than the gritty pleasure of Jesus fucking him. Sliding his hands up Jesus’s back is enough to distract him from whatever it is he gets out of being done up the ass, and he arches his spine to press into the touch.

The shift though, it makes him fuck deeper into Jesus, and after a minute or so he’s back to thinking he’s not gonna last long at all. Daryl spits into his hand to fist Jesus’s dick, and he licks the thumb of his other to reach up and rub one tight little nipple. Before he can though, Jesus wraps hands around his wrist and pulls his arm up, and his knuckles curl loosely as Jesus grins at him. 

“God that feels good. Thank you for this,” he says, lips brushing over the pads of Daryl’s fingertips. 

He’s got that look again before he rolls his tongue out to lick Daryl’s fingers wet and then wrap his lips around them. Sucks on them like a promise.

Jesus’s lashes flutter and slip shut, and Daryl can’t look away from where the kid is tonguing his fingers. That spark made flame is a blaze burning through him and it’s got nothing to do with the sweat gathering between their skin or the sizzle consuming his nerves. He gets it now, that this is being wanted in a way that ain’t asking for more than he can give, and if he doesn’t come back a second time, Jesus ain’t gonna hold it against him. That all he’s looking to trade is a few minutes of feeling like this.

“Hey, I’m gonna—” Daryl says, and rescues his fingers from Jesus’s mouth to slide them through his hair to the nape of his neck. 

He pulls Jesus back down to kiss him, lets a groan slip off his tongue when he’s getting to the point he can’t hold back any longer. And after that hard slam of pleasure leaves him, there’s a glimpse of something raw and ragged left behind.

He blinks it away—that terrifying void, that yawning ache—and focuses instead on what’s right in front of him. He drowns himself in the way the kid kisses when he’s all worked up, and finds just the right grip to make Jesus swear and not mind at all that Daryl’s softening up a bit. He grinds against Daryl’s dick, into his fist, single-minded and desperate, and not so much kissing back anymore and just letting Daryl tonguefuck him.

The hard shake and throb of his body when he tips over makes it seem like he feels it in every inch of his being as he comes, and Daryl wrings every last drop out of him, not caring that the mess is streaked all over him. Maybe even shot so high it’s gotten him at the neck. It’s hard to tell if the trickle running over his collarbone is a bit of a jizz or just sweat. Bit of spunk is far from the worst thing he’s had drying on his skin at the end of the day.

“That was amazing,” Jesus says, after about a minute of just sharing Daryl’s breath and rocking against him.

He’s about to say something like, “Yeah, it wasn’t too bad,” but he stops himself before he lets that mistake fly and makes a small sound of agreement instead. Amazing isn’t a word he’d use, but this was definitely good. _Nice._ He gives the back of Jesus’s neck a light massage and that’s enough to bring a faintly curving smile back to the kid’s mouth, message received.

When Jesus is sliding off his lap, he lets his gaze linger. There’s no reason to be coy about it, and yeah, maybe he would want to drop by again. 

“You lookin’ for a boyfriend?” he asks, reaching down to grab up his shorts to mop up the mess spattered across his chest. 

Jesus shakes out his pants and glances over. “I don’t know to be honest. I’ve been alone for a long time, and this fight….” He looks away as he finishes getting dressed. “Being alone and being lonely aren’t synonymous. You?”

If he weren’t lying about the group home there’s something rough behind him: fighting, drugs, who knows, but to use a word like _synonymous_ —Hell, they might both know how to suck some dick, but they’re two very different sorts of fuck ups.

“Ain’t looking for anything really,” Daryl says, hauling on his shirt and rescuing his pants off the floor. As he sizes Jesus up the fire inside him remains, banked but warm. “But who knows. Bit of company ain’t such a bad thing.”

“Well, you know where to find me,” Jesus tells him softly and walks him to the door. 

He rocks on his heels, hesitant before stepping in to give Daryl one last kiss that’s slow and lingering and somehow still over before you know it like the sun giving way to the night.

Ain’t really nothing else to say to that, so Daryl gives him a nod and fishes some smokes out of his pocket. Jesus holds up a hand to decline and watches him from the doorway as he lights up and steps out into the darkness and quiet.


End file.
